Thomson

It’s a heck of a way to run a pre-election campaign. On the eve of an expected election, politicians usually spend their time playing up good news, downplaying the bad, shaking hands and kissing babies.

NASCAR 2011: The business of being Danica Patrick

Versatile Danica Patrick has made a huge name for herself since her three open-wheel Montreal races

Danica Patrick drives her #7 Team GoDaddy Andretti Autosport Dallara Honda during qualifying for the the 95th Indianapolis 500 Mile Race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 21, 2011 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Photograph by: (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

“This sport needs characters and personalities, and being cookie-cutter is not a personality. That’s not what gets the attention and portrays who you really are. I want to say what I really think. I pride myself on that, and on being honest.”

For all of the things that have changed in Danica Patrick’s life since we sat alone for an hour at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve eight Augusts ago, there are beliefs that remain unchanged.

“That’s definitely who I still am,” Patrick said when asked, during a lengthy talk before this weekend’s race in Montreal, whether the quote is still a part of who she is.

And then she sighed.

“I will say that I probably used to speak my mind a little more often. But as I’ve sort of grown up and become someone who gets more media and public attention, I feel like I bite my tongue a little bit here and there, mostly because it makes my life a lot easier.

“Whenever you give your opinion, everyone has an opinion to give on that. It makes things complicated and it alienates a certain group of people.

“But am I the same Danica? Both my husband and my assistant tell me: ‘Oh yes, what you say in interviews comes through quite clearly. You couldn’t be cookie-cutter if you tried.’ ”

Patrick arrives in Montreal as arguably the brightest name on the marquee of this weekend’s NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200, steering the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet Impala on the first road-course she’ll have ever raced in a stock car.

The 29-year-old’s star quality at least matches that of Roush Fenway’s Carl Edwards, the gifted, hugely popular winner here in 2009, and it by far eclipses that of Toronto’s Ron Fellows, her JRM teammate who ran to Montreal victory in heavy rains a year earlier, a great win for one of the truly great guys in racing. Edwards and Fellows will command plenty of attention. As will 1997 Formula One world champion Jacques Villeneuve, who straps into Penske Racing’s No. 22 Dodge Challenger, and Quebecer Patrick Carpentier, whose run in the Pastrana-Waltrip No. 99 Toyota Camry will be the final race in his remarkable 27-year career.

But it is Danica Patrick’s name that will be on everyone’s lips when engines are fired Friday for practice and qualifying and then on Saturday afternoon, when a field of 43 cars takes the green flag.

Patrick has raced Circuit Gilles Villeneuve three times, crashing a Barber Dodge in 2002, then finishing fifth and third in 2003 and ’04 Toyota Atlantic events.

She recalls a great deal about Montreal, a city she’s not visited in seven years, if nothing whatsoever about her wreck in an entry-level open-wheel Barber Dodge.

“Oh right, Barber Dodge! I don’t remember that race at all,” Patrick said, surprised to be corrected when she said she’d run here twice.

“Oddly enough, I remember everything about the circuit, the whole track, even though some of the distances I have visually in my head may feel different when I’m in a stock car.

“It’s a great race track with passing opportunities going into the hairpin at the far end. And there’s that great big dragstrip off of it, where you can actually draft someone, into the fast chicane.”

She laughed.

“Well, it’s a fast chicane in an open-wheel car. But there will be lots of opportunities to pass, which is going to be cool.

“The city is great. I remember walking downtown, lots of great restaurants, coming over the bridge to the track in the morning and seeing the old (Expo 67) pavilions. And on the way to the track, driving by those weird block-looking apartments (Habitat 67 on Cité du Havre).”

Patrick wished she could have raced IndyCars on the Villeneuve circuit, graduating to them from Atlantic in 2005. But Champ cars had followed CART onto the island in ’04, during the era’s silly open-wheel split, and there they remained through 2006, when NASCAR moved in the following summer.

So Patrick now returns to Montreal, in her eyes much better late than never – even if she had to sweet-talk the JR Motorsports team to add a third car to their NAPA 200 effort.

Patrick needs a shoehorn to fit even a phone call into her days. The native of Roscoe, Ill., is running a full-time, 18-race March-to-October IndyCar schedule for Andretti Autosport, doing 12 Nationwide events for JRM, and in between is exhaustingly busy with car-testing and a business and sponsorship plate that’s overflowing.

Racing’s worst-kept secret might be Patrick’s imminent move to NASCAR; almost surely, she’s headed next season to JRM to run a full campaign of Nationwide and a select Sprint Cup schedule for Stewart-Haas.

“First and foremost, it’s going to be going with my gut, what I want and where I feel I’ll be happiest,” she said during our talk, claiming no decision to move had yet been made.

“I can’t exactly say after driving an IndyCar for seven years and Nationwide part-time for two years that the business isn’t more complicated than it used to be.

“These things need figuring out, evaluating. It takes a lot of time, it’s not straightforward. It’s not like I’m a young driver without any sponsors. It’s much more complicated.”

A simpler decision, Patrick said, was wanting to run Montreal, a statement she’ll repeat today (Aug. 18) when she and Jacques Villeneuve are showcased in a dinner-hour news conference at a downtown hotel.

“I really had to push (JRM) because I really want to run this track,” Patrick said of the Villeneuve circuit.

“They’re running Aric (Almirola, the team’s full-time Nationwide driver) and they really wanted to run Ron Fellows, who’s obviously a great road-course driver and a Canadian. But they made it work for me by running the third car.”

Patrick arrived in Montreal in 2003 as a project for open-wheel racing legend and team-owner Bobby Rahal, who’d seen her doggedly pursuing her career against many odds in often unenlightened England.

“They never believed in me,” Patrick said frankly eight years ago. “If I was the fastest, a (British) team owner would say to his driver: ‘The girl is quickest; go out there and get your ass in gear.’ I mean, respect me, please? I can go fast. Women there just fetch the beer and cook the dinner.”

But Patrick enjoyed success in spite of the obstacles, giving the Englishmen all they could handle in the fiercely competitive Formula Ford circuit.

Rahal brought her back to North America and gave her five 2002 starts in Barber Dodge; her only did-not-finish was in Montreal. And then he moved her into two years of Atlantic, one step be-low the Champ Car World Series.

“This isn’t a publicity stunt,” said Rahal, the 1986 Indianapolis 500 champion. “My reputation, name and everything I’ve done in racing is on the line. I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t think she could do it.”

In two Atlantic seasons, Patrick had five podium finishes and finished fourth as many times.

In 2005, at age 23, she moved into IndyCar, rookie-of-the-year in both the Indy 500 and for the season. Her first two years saw her run for Rahal and TV star David Letterman, the last five for Andretti. In her 111 IndyCar races, Patrick has recorded one win, at Japan in 2008, earned three poles, finished on the podium seven times and had 20 top-five results.

She is at least as well known for her activities off the track. Patrick is not hard on the eyes, and she’s been a popular figure in various states of (un)dress in, among other places, the cheesecake pages of FHM magazine and Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.

Once a high-school cheerleader, Patrick stars in bright, mildly risqué TV commercials for corporate partner/sponsor GoDaddy.com, the Internet domain giant for whom she’s not reluctant to display the looks of a model – which, in fact, she is.

In 2003, she playfully spoke to FHM about her on-track relationship with male racers: “I need to beat them, belittle them and make them feel small. Trying to run them off the road at 170 mph isn’t sweet and kind.” Talk like that, and things like leading Trans-Am champ Tommy Kendall through a 2002 Long Beach paddock on a leash after winning a bet, tend to get people talking.

Then, and now, Patrick speaks of giving a sponsor value for their investment in a highly competitive business in which the recognition factor is sometimes as important as the checkered flag.

Where eight years ago Patrick came to Montreal as a fledgling support-series racer using the less busy trackside washroom, today she is a global, multimedia brand.

“My life has definitely changed,” Patrick said. “I’d like to think that I’m a brand. It’s a good extension, a good business thing for me to be a brand. It helps me.

“Hopefully, the people around me would say that I’m not necessarily a different person. I think that’s the biggest compliment, when you can go through as much as I have and be as much of a public person as I am and still kind of be the person I was 20 years ago or 10 years ago. You’d have to ask my friends if I am.”

Eight years ago, this was Patrick: “I have no more responsibility as a woman than if I were a guy. I don’t feel obligated by who or what I am or what I have to do. I’ll only be as good as I can be.”

She hears that quote read back and says that it, too, is who she is today.

“... As far as being a woman in the sport, it describes me but it doesn’t define me. I’m just a race-car driver. I’m a girl and I don’t write that off because, trust me, I benefit from that as well. It’s not like I’m going to take all the good and not the bad with it. That’s not responsible. I’m just going out there to be the best that I can be, girl and everything.”

At some point this weekend, on the Villeneuve circuit or off it, Patrick might pause to consider how dramatically her life has changed since her first forgotten visit to Montreal, or the two nice results that followed.

She long ago gave up trying to chart a road that becomes a hairpin when she’s expecting a long straight. “Life changes so fast for me,” Patrick said. “Every two years I’m in such a different position than I thought I could be in, or things have changed more than I’d expect them to.

“No, I can’t track my life or predict it. People ask me where I’ll be in five or 10 years and I say: ‘I have no idea where I’ll be next year.’

“If you’d asked me when we sat down together eight years ago if I’d be surprised to be where I am now, I’d probably have just told you: ‘Man, anything’s possible.’ ”

Danica Patrick drives her #7 Team GoDaddy Andretti Autosport Dallara Honda during qualifying for the the 95th Indianapolis 500 Mile Race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 21, 2011 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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